The Cemetery, the State and the Exiles: A Study of Cementerio Colón, Havana, and Woodlawn Cemetery, Miami

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Marivic Wyndham
Peter Read

Abstract

One of the unsuspected costs of exile is the inability to care for the family tombs for which, especially in Latin American countries, one may feel a sharp personal responsibility. The desecration of such tombs renders the pain of exile sharper still. We examine the ways in which the Cuban State has abandoned responsibility for the care of the tombs of the exiles in the island’s largest cemetery, Cementerio Cristóbal Colón in Havana.

Many exiles hope and plan to return to resume life in their former birthland. Perhaps to show their intentions, their cemeteries in the new countries are piecemeal and temporary. Little by little it becomes apparent that their state of exile has passed from medium term to long term to permanence. In Woodlawn Cemetery, Miami, some of the exiles’ dead remain in unworthy graves while the inscriptions on their tombs remind their descendants of the promise of permanent return which they never now will keep.

Article Details

Section
General Articles (Peer Reviewed)
Author Biographies

Marivic Wyndham, University of Technology, Sydney

Dr Marivic Wyndham is Senior Lecturer in Latin American Studies, University of Technology Sydney. Her research focuses on the physical memorialisation of the past in Latin America.

Peter Read, University of Sydney

Professor Peter Read works in the Department of History, University of Sydney. He is particularly interested in the way the past is remembered and reconciled in Aboriginal Australia and Latin America.